Musings on a life singing, teaching and being a creature of the theatre!

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Who Said it was Fair?

Sunday musings...

I remember my Dad saying that to me in response to my whining about something many many moons ago...

I hear that "whining" from some; sheer confusion from others; utter disbelief from yet more; exhaustion from some;

"Why am I not..."

fill in the blank...getting a callback, getting an audition, booking the job, finding an agent, and the list goes on and on and on...

There are no pat answers. There is no direct path to whatever you "want". The variables are many and who said it was fair?

"Fair" has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Period. Business doesn't look at fair. It doesn't care about fair. It doesn't even acknowledge fair.

You have decided you want to be in this business. A business that is beyond over-saturated by great talent, good talent, okay talent, mediocre talent, and no talent at all.

The sooner you quit whining the sooner you discover what you need to do for YOU!

It is easy to get distracted by others; I hear this a lot too "All my friends are booking shows; all my friends are booking tours; all my friends are on Broadway."

That's nice for them. That isn't YOU. If you are so busy looking at what your friends are doing, who is paying attention to YOU?

Nothing is fair in business. You have to figure out what is needed to be seen, when, how and why.

There are many who are talented that are never acknowledged fully or at all.

Business is about business. If you happen to be talented, bonus!

Do not take it personally. We hear that a great deal. Of course it IS personal, but perhaps not the way you are taking it. If you are stolen from, lied to, taken advantage of - of course that's personal. However, you not booking the job may not be personal at all.

The more you whine, get frustrated and not DO anything about it, the more you wallow in yourself. Nobody wants to hire or even see THAT.

It isn't fair. So what are you going to do about it? Not fair is a given. It is not going to change.

SOOOOOOOO...

What do you DO?

Focus has to go back to YOU. What are you doing to make yourself marketable? To make yourself seen?

Are you truly the best YOU you can be in the business? Are you really ready to step up and take stage and be the one to be hired?

Are you studying? Are you exploring cross-disciplines as fully as you need to? Are you invested in the technique of your craft? Do you know how you are seen/how you choose to be seen, and is that coming through essentially?

Are you investing in learning about business? How it functions? What the game is? No one of us is going to change the game. We learn to play, negotiate the land mines and make it work.

Are you refusing to take the advice from people who simply know better, because "it's not fair, and I want it my way?"

Well, time to give your head a hard shake and sit down in your dizzying self-delusional importance!

Time to ask some REAL questions and get some REAL answers. Don't ask your friends! Ask yourself and then invest in asking people in the business that MAKE IT their business to give real answers.

Why are you pursuing this?

What do you want to do?

What are you strengths?

How do you want to be seen?

How can your strengths be enhanced?

Have you committed to developing that enhancement?

How's that working?

What is your trump card? What is that "uniquely you" quality that sets you apart? That WILL set you apart if you find it?

Then, the questioning is asked of the business person OF you...what do they see? Where do they see you NOW? How do you achieve the next level? Are you delusional or are you being realistic in your goals, your abilities, your talents, your...?

And simply, will you listen to the truth when it stands in front of you, or will you dismiss it and continue to say it's not fair?

The beauty of artistic pursuit, is that it can be developed ANY where. It doesn't have to be in one venue. It has many levels of consciousness and evolution. How it is fulfilled with one, maybe something very different for another.

Are you finding out where you are? Where you could be? Where you want to be? Where you should be? In THAT development?

Is the business ready to recognize you in any of those? Yet? Now? Later? Maybe not?

If we truly take on the responsibility of asking the right questions, seeking the right people, seeking the truth and discovering the answers, there is no time to whine or say it's not fair.

Who said it was fair? No one I know. We are all too busy trying to find our way and answer our own questions. If you have time on your hands to mope around about what your friends are doing and what you are not - there's a whole other set of questions you need to start asking!!

3 comments:

Thank you for this post! It is too easy to wallow in a cycle of "why is the universe against me" when the only thing to really do about it is to see "Ok. What can I do better to make this difficult world more likely to work for me."

While it's good to look around and see that others can do something you can't (so...go take dance classes or acting classes or voice lessons to fix that!) but by and large we get hired based on what is special about us. Resist the pull to be like everyone else. No one ever got to the top by being average or ordinary.

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